


Broken Toy

by Whisky (whiskyrunner)



Series: Broken Toy [1]
Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-19
Updated: 2010-08-19
Packaged: 2017-11-02 12:48:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/369132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiskyrunner/pseuds/Whisky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Based on this prompt: <i>As dream technology spreads throughout the underground, heavyweights in prostitution rings begin to take notice—especially of the famous Forgers of extraction. Eager to be the first to reach this new market, they begin to hire forgers left and right, only to find that most of them aren't good enough to meet the specific needs of their clients. And so, they set their sights on the best forger in the business: Eames.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Broken Toy

**Author's Note:**

> Also available in [podfic form](http://emilianadarling.livejournal.com/1377.html) thanks to emilianadarling!
> 
> Warnings: References to noncon situations, suicide.

The streets were cobblestone and lined with old brick buildings, Tower Bridge looming in the background. The building itself was marble and had a massive, ornate fountain that looked like the Trevi Fountain in gold outside. Inside, it looked like every description of Las Vegas hotels Cobb had ever heard. He took it all in with an architect's eye, not an extractor's. Extractors had already been here and ferreted out every secret the place could hold.

"Eames," he murmured gently under his breath, even though there was nobody to reproach but projections around him. Eames had built from memory. He'd never been an architect. Goddamnit.

It would just make things more difficult, that was all. _Not impossible,_ Cobb thought, thumbing the smooth top in his pocket, _just bloody difficult..._

He took a seat at the bar and drank his scotch neat. It burned a path down his throat, Cobb's brain filling in the sensation with perfect accuracy. Fingers twitching restlessly against the cool glass, he slipped one hand into his pocket, pulled out the top, set it on the polished bar and gave it a spin. It wavered momentarily and then straightened, tiny lights flickering off its surface.

The young brunette woman who slid onto the stool at his side had a soft voice and a hand that felt light and cool on Cobb's thigh.

"Buy you a drink?"

Cobb took another sip of scotch without answering right away, just gazed into the amber liquid for a few seconds. When he looked up, his eyes went straight past the blank-faced bartender to the mirrored surface behind rows of hanging glasses. There was no woman next to him. Only Eames, his eyes downcast and his fingertips drumming silently against the surface of the bar.

"Eames," said Cobb softly.

No response from the woman on his right. In the mirror on his left, Eames' brow furrowed just a twitch, not with any recognition. Behind them, the casino flashed the bright lights of a hundred slot machines, echoed with whirring pings and jangling sounds and the murmuring of a thousand projections.

"Do you know me?" Cobb asked, finally turning to face his companion.

A hush fell over the entire casino. The bartender stopped wiping out a glass and looked straight at him. Cobb could feel the intent stares of every projection in the room prickling at the back of his neck.

The young woman gazed intently into his face. "Of course I know you," she murmured, but it was another long minute before she said, uncertainly, surprised, "Cobb."

The silence broke. The other people at the bar went back to chattering, the bartender turned away, the casino came back to life as though it had momentarily lost power and now the generators were grinding back into gear.

"You don't need to disguise yourself for me, Eames," Cobb said quietly. "That's not what I came here for."

He -- she? -- smiled ruefully, not looking him in the eyes. "I'm not sure I know how to be myself anymore, love."

Love. Cobb had never been on the receiving end of one of Eames' terms of endearment before. That honour had always been Arthur's. Hearing it now made his skin crawl in an unpleasant way. It sounded wrong, somehow. Sounded off in some way, like it had passed its expiry date and gone stale.

"Look. Look in the mirror," Cobb urged gently.

"There are no mirrors here."

"I know. That's why I made one for you."

Eames followed Cobb's gaze and saw the mirrored surface behind the bar. Cobb watched his reflection stare into its own eyes, reach up a hand to touch its cheek. The conversations behind them were dying out like lightbulbs flickering out one by one, the hush starting to settle over them once again like a pall.

Eames removed his hand from Cobb's leg. His voice was low and familiarly husky and weirdly calm. "Cobb, what are you doing here? I'm afraid I don't quite understand."

"You're dreaming, Eames. You've been dreaming for a very long time now."

"Didn't you know, Cobb?" said Eames. "We were always dreaming. I thought you might have guessed, of all of us. Reality's a myth, darling."

The top was still spinning, lights were still bouncing off it, tiny glittering stars on its silver surface.

"There's a reality," said Cobb. "And it's waiting up there for you. We're all waiting for you, me and Arthur and Ariadne."

"I'd have thought Arthur would come in person," said Eames dryly, reaching out and plucking a toothpick off the bar. He played with it in his deft fingers, fiddling with it distractedly. "Given that it's my dream."

Cobb didn't know what to say, how to tell him that Arthur hadn't wanted to come in person. Hadn't wanted to see the state of Eames' subconscious, or invade and pry it open even further than it had already been forced, or have to explain to Eames that he was real, solid; not just the figment of a fevered mind.

"It's time to wake up, Eames," Cobb told him. He checked his watch. "Nearly time."

Eames had snapped the toothpick in four places, so that it splintered up and down like a broken bone. "I appreciate your coming, Cobb. I'm glad it's you sharing my dream, for the moment. But you're waiting for a kick that's never going to come, darling. Perhaps you'll land in another level. Your own dream. But I won't be coming with you."

"We're waiting," said Cobb. The long hand of his watch moved so slowly. He unstuck his throat. "Waiting for a -- kick, and -- I know where it's going to take you."

"And where's that, dear Cobb?" Eames looked at him, finally, with dead eyes. Unreachable eyes. Eyes of a man who had retreated into the very darkest space in his mind and was not going to come out, all his reactions and casual words automatic, sleepwalking.

"Home." The hanging glasses in front of the mirror began to click together. The lights above them flickered. The projections had turned away again, the low buzz of conversation carrying on regardless of the growing rumble. Cobb tossed back the last swallow of scotch and got to his feet. Held out his hand. "Come with me, Eames."

There was a swelling, rising crescendo of noise. Low, rumbling horns. The opening notes of _Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien_ , pulled out into long, dragging notes; notes that caused the briefest flicker of life to appear in Eames' eyes. Only for a moment. He could hear the music and since it was his dream, Cobb could hear it, too.

"What is that?" he asked. Cobb snatched up his still effortlessly revolving top and pocketed it.

"Arthur," he answered simply, and then the ceiling was ripped apart in a cataclysm of noise. He felt Eames grab onto his hand in the instant before he jolted awake. The building was on fire. There were three corpses on the floor, all with a neat, round bullet hole in their foreheads.

Arthur was gripping him by the forearm and pulling him to his feet, cradling a heavy rifle in the other arm. "Did you find him alright?"

"Yeah," Cobb gasped, reflexively touching the firm weight in his pocket. "Is he waking up?"

Arthur pointed. Eames was sprawled on the stained mattress, just as they'd found him, in ragged jeans and a worn t-shirt that was a size too big for him. But now his eyelids were flickering, his breaths coming harsher and faster, fingers twitching against the stained bedspread. The various IVs and catheters had been yanked out of his body.

"Let me." And then Arthur was hefting the rifle into Cobb's arms, and he leaned down, pulling Eames to his feet and hooking the forger's arm firmly around his shoulders. Eames seemed non-responsive, but managed to stay on his feet, weaving slightly. Arthur pulled a spare handgun out of his waistband and cocked it. His expression was, as usual, perfectly, chillingly calm. "Let's go."

They fought their way out, through the security and the flames and the choking black smoke. When they staggered out onto the street, Arthur shifted his grip on the gun and reached down to punch the detonator in his coat pocket. The building buckled with the force of the explosion, sending up a pillar of dust and smoke into the sky. Arthur had always liked to play with his C4.

They piled into the white van Yusuf had left idling next to the curb. One more getaway, Cobb had asked him, for Eames' sake. They couldn't do it by themselves. Yusuf had booked the next flight out. He peeled into the road before they'd even slammed the door shut.

Eames' eyes were open and glassy, far away. He was covered in sweat and starting to shake, Cobb realized.

"Arthur," Yusuf yelled over his shoulder, peeling in and out of traffic. "Give him the sedative now."

Arthur nodded once, grabbing up the kit on the floor of the van, but Eames' eyes had suddenly flown open at the word _sedative_.

"No," he choked, jerking away and lashing out when Arthur lifted a glistening needle. "No. Please, no more, please, please, don't--"

Cobb grabbed him by the arms as he started to rise, hauled him in against his chest and held Eames' arms behind his back before he could strike at Arthur. Arthur's expression didn't so much as flicker. He pinned Eames' legs with his knees and gripped Eames' wrist when Cobb released one of his arms. A dry sob escaped Eames as he watched Arthur slide in the needle in, helpless. Then it was gone, and Arthur flicked it wordlessly back into the kit and grabbed a cotton ball to press against the welling spot of blood on Eames' arm, and by then Eames was already slumping back into Cobb's chest, his limbs going slack.

Cobb caught his breath for a few moments and met Arthur's eyes over the sedated forger's head. Arthur didn't have a strand of hair out of place, didn't even look a fraction as shaken as Cobb felt. He simply raised a questioning eyebrow at Cobb's stare.

Well. Cobb had known this wouldn't be easy when Arthur first asked for his help. He just wished he knew what the hell was running through his point man's head at that moment. \+ 

They went back to the warehouse, of course. The drive from Germany to Paris was long and they kept Eames sedated for every leg of the trip, and then again when they arrived. It was a compound for dreamless sleep, Yusuf had told them, and it would help Eames with the gradual transition from virtual coma to consciousness without the pain of withdrawal.

Eames fought every time he had to receive the injection again, apparently not caring about the promise of dreamless sleep. In the few moments when he was awake, he begged, sobbed, raged, fought them, and -- most painful of all -- offered them sex, if only they'd stop. Before long Cobb and Arthur had their restraint method down to an art, Cobb holding him down while Arthur administered the injection.

"I don't like this," Cobb confessed after one ordeal.

Arthur had looked at him, a bruise already forming on his cheek where Eames had struck him. "It's for his own good," he said.

Cobb knew that already. He didn't have to like it. He sat back in his chair, placed the top on his desk, and twirled it. It spun prettily and toppled over.

"Where are we going to keep him?"

"Why not Ariadne's place?" Yusuf said. He'd just walked into Cobb's office. They both looked at him, and he shrugged. "It's cosier. Being that she actually lives here in Paris all the time."

"And he's probably had enough of men right now," Cobb added quietly, scooping his top up.

Ariadne, right on Yusuf's heels and carrying a grocery bag full of food, snorted. "You don't think women would take advantage of that kind of service?" she said. When all three of them wordlessly transferred their gazes to her, she flushed. "It's an equal opportunity hate-on. Anyway, I don't mind him staying with me."

"No," Arthur interjected flatly. He looked down at Cobb's desk and tapped it distractedly. "We don't know what kind of state he's in. He's had a lot of violent sex pushed on him over a very long period of time and I don't want him redirecting that at Ariadne."

Her cheeks flushed even pinker. Trust Arthur to cut straight through their meandering thoughts without skipping round the point.

"He can stay with me," he added, still not looking up.

"No," said Cobb, scrubbing a hand tiredly over his growing stubble. "Look, I don't think it's a good idea for him to share a space with a man right now ..."

"Then it's settled," said Ariadne, shrugging, and setting down the bag of groceries. She looked at Cobb. "We all stay at the warehouse."

Cobb couldn't form much of an argument against that, and Arthur couldn't, either. So they left the office and started rearranging tables and boxes, forming little walls, trying to cordon off a space that could be just Eames'. Arthur dragged in a deck chair that would serve as a bed and Ariadne made it comfortable with a duvet and crocheted blankets from her flat.

"Look, Eames," she said, the next time he regained consciousness, leading him to the corner they'd set up. "You can sleep right here. And we'll be right over there, okay? None of us are going to leave you."

He sank, eyes bloodshot and unfocused, onto the end of the deck chair, looking as though he hadn't heard her at all. Cobb quietly beckoned her away as Arthur approached, indicating for her to leave.

"Eames," said Arthur, in a low, gentle tone.

Eames blinked up at him blearily, like a drunk. Once again, Cobb kind of hated them for doing this to him. And then something unexpected happened: Eames' gaze seemed to focus, and there was a spark of recognition in there.

"Darling," he rasped.

"Yeah." Arthur settled onto the chair beside him, their thighs brushing comfortably together. Eames leaned his head in, tiredly, his forehead almost touching Arthur's. He reached out and splayed his fingers over Arthur's knee. Arthur's gaze flickered sideways towards Cobb and he swallowed, and for the first time Cobb saw something almost like regret in his eyes.

Arthur covered Eames' hand with his own, the one not holding the syringe behind his back.

"Eames," he said again, steadily. "You know why I have to send you to sleep, don't you?"

"Yes," Eames said. And Cobb (foolish, hopeful Cobb) actually thought this time might go peacefully before the scene inverted upon itself abruptly in an ugly way. Eames went on huskily, "So you can fuck me, darling," and his hand came up to grip Arthur's hair so he could lean in and crush their lips together.

For a second Arthur seemed to be frozen in shock. Cobb was, too, his folded arms sagging slightly. Then, dropping the syringe onto the floor, Arthur pressed both hands to Eames' chest and shoved him away, hard. So hard that Eames fell onto the floor and grunted in pain.

"You're a fucking tease, Arthur!" he bellowed, twisting over on the floor, breathing like he'd just had his windpipe ripped open. "Go on, then, keep pretending! You don't have to fucking pretend with me! You don't have to!"

He was trying to get up; Arthur and Cobb suddenly unfroze. Cobb grabbed his arm, twisted it behind his back and shoved Eames flat with a knee in the small of his back while Arthur went for the syringe. Now Eames was sobbing, a choked, broken-glass sound that whistled straight up from his lungs, and laughing at the same time.

"Is this because I'd forgotten what you looked like? Arthur, put the syringe down and I'll never forget again, darling. I'll hold your face in my mind and I'll never let it go. Please put the syringe down, don't do this, Arthur, pet, love, don't--"

With shaking hands, Arthur grabbed his arm and somehow managed to jam the syringe in straight. He depressed the plunger and as they watched, Eames' head lolled and he relaxed against the floor. His harsh, rapid breaths evened out.

Without speaking, the two men lifted Eames between them and laid him on his back on the deck chair. Eames looked almost peaceful, lying like that.

Cobb heard Ariadne give a soft sob behind them.

"It's for his own good," Arthur said forcefully, looking away. He stormed away before Cobb could stop him.

Ariadne looked at Cobb tearfully. "We are doing the right thing, aren't we?" she asked.

Cobb let out his breath in one slow rush. "He's out of that place now," he said quietly. "That makes it right."

+

The first night they spent in the warehouse, Eames had a panic attack at 1AM and started vomiting and clawing at his wrists as if to dislodge phantom IV lines, and none of them got any sleep after that.

+

In the morning Yusuf told them it would be safe to start weaning Eames off the drugs. Cobb went to him while he was still passed out, and started the delicate operation of replacing Eames' clothing, the jeans and shirt he'd been wearing for God knows how long.

Eames stirred while he undressed him, eyes only just cracking open. "I could be anyone you want, darling," he croaked. "Let me be Mal for you. D'you want to make love to her, as many last times as you want, yeah?"

Cobb shook his head, bit his lip and lost his nerve. Arthur stepped in smoothly to take over. Cobb hadn't even known he was there.

+

Arthur moved a lawn chair into Eames' corner, so he could sit with him during the long hours he was awake. He brought Eames an English newspaper in the mornings, and a pastry, and a steaming cup of tea that Eames would cradle in his hands until it turned cold. With Cobb supervising like a gruff mother bear, they took Eames to Arthur's flat so that Arthur could clean him up, get him into the shower and help to remove months of collected imaginary filth and blood. He did this without so much as blushing or faltering, as though it were simply one more duty a point man was expected to perform. Eames was tired and pliant under Arthur's hands. When he leaned in to touch Arthur's face, or try to kiss him again, Arthur would gently but firmly push him away and carry on whatever he was doing.

"You want to fuck me, Arthur," Eames breathed. Cobb could hear him, as he was standing right outside the bathroom with his arms folded over his chest, like a bouncer. He glanced inside. Arthur was patiently buttoning up Eames' shirt, shaking off the hands that Eames latched around his wrists. "I know you do. Just fuck me, Arthur, why don't you? Please?"

"It's the only language he knows now," Ariadne said later, chewing her lip, when the four of them were sitting around Cobb's office and Eames was drifting off in his corner again. "He was down there for, how long?"

"Almost four months," said Arthur mechanically. "Fifteen weeks. One-hundred and six days. There's one-thousand, four-hundred forty minutes in a day. That's two-hundred eighty-eight five-minute periods in a day, which is two-hundred and eighty-eight hours per day in the dreamscape, or twelve days. Multiplied by one-hundred and six real days, that's one-thousand, two-hundred and seventy-two days in the dreamscape."

They all stared at him blankly, even Yusuf, who was usually quite good at calculating dreamscape to real time for the purposes of his trade.

"Almost three and a half years," Arthur clarified. "That's assuming they were using the regular compound, and that he didn't spend any time deeper than one layer."

"Jesus Christ," Ariadne mumbled numbly.

Three and a half years spent transfiguring himself, hour after hour after hour, to be used up and wrung out with no respite. No wonder the forger was confused as hell now. Cobb's gut gave a sharp twist. He was not the sort to leave any member of his team in the lurch. He should never have let Eames fall off the radar. He might have prevented this.

"He'll be okay," said Arthur, looking down at his hands, no real conviction in his voice. "I mean, once he's feeling stronger. And he's got bedsores, but they'll heal too. We just need to convince him that he's back in reality."

"And, you know, that we don't want to rape him," muttered Ariadne, half-stifling herself.

"Yes," said Arthur, his shoulders sinking slightly. "And that."

He didn't sound terribly hopeful.

+

On one morning Cobb woke up in his chair from what was probably the most cramped and uncomfortable sleep in his life, and he made a living out of sleeping wherever he happened to be. He could hear Ariadne and Arthur arguing just outside his office door, in the hushed voices of two people who are trying to whisper but may as well be yelling anyway.

"Look, I don't know what it is with you and your thing about ignoring other people's issues until they resolve them on their own," Ariadne was hissing, "but isn't this one kind of _painfully obvious_ , Arthur!"

"I know it is," Arthur shot back. "I'm not ignoring it, for Christ's sake, just because I don't call attention to it at every opportunity--"

Feeling very rumpled and groggy, Cobb got up stiffly from his chair and opened the door. Both point man and architect looked away from each other quickly.

"What happened," said Cobb.

"Eames attacked him again," said Ariadne, her cheeks turning red. "Arthur basically broke his wrist."

"It isn't broken. I know what I'm doing."

"You're confusing him!" she said, struggling to keep her voice down. "He spent three and half years down there getting taken advantage of every other minute -- he doesn't know proper social norms anymore, Arthur. He doesn't understand why you don't want to -- do that to him. And he's trying to jump you before you can do it to him because that way he feels like he has some semblance of control over the situation."

Arthur glanced sidelong at Cobb, who understood that he was supposed to arbitrate here. He hesitated. For an architecture student, Ariadne had an innate understanding of the workings of her colleagues' minds that was second to none. She'd figured him out within their first shared dreaming session, after all.

"She's probably right," Cobb said quietly to Arthur.

"Well, I don't know what to do, then," said Arthur, throwing up his hands. He was trying to sound unruffled, but Cobb knew him well enough to hear the smallest waver in his voice. It surprised him, unpleasantly. Arthur was not a wavering-voice kind of guy. "Go back there, let him have his way with me, get it out of his system, Ari? What?"

"I don't know," she admitted resentfully. "I don't know what he needs. But you can't just push him away like that, you have to explain."

Yusuf was sitting at the desk nearby and listening. At this he got up and joined them, passing a cup of coffee to Cobb, who took it gratefully.

"Maybe there is something we can do," Yusuf started hesitantly. "You might not like the sound of it. But we could put him back to sleep -- design a dream for him where he can let himself relax. Better than sitting around in a chair here and getting injections twice a day."

The first mouthful of coffee almost burned Cobb's throat when he swallowed it unexpectedly and he started to cough. "No," he said, as soon as he could speak. "No. It's too risky. There's too many things he could introduce to the dream." _Shades are too real_ , he thought with a pang.

"Then I'll go down with him," said Arthur immediately. Right now, for once, there wasn't much Cobb could decipher about his point man, but he was pretty sure he knew in that moment: Arthur wanted Eames to have a nightmare so he could blaze in and blow all the bad guys to hell, because at least it would be something. At least he might not feel so much like they'd gotten there too late.

"No," said Ariadne. "I'll go with him. It'd be easier for him with me there to hold the dream together. I can design it, make sure he doesn't change it."

They were looking at him, Cobb realized. He sighed. He wasn't Eames' therapist. He wasn't Eames' anything. Just his boss, on occasion, and Eames barely honoured that arrangement anyway.

"Yeah," he said finally. "It's worth a shot, I guess."

Yusuf brought them a milder sedative to give to Eames before putting him under, to help him relax in case the dreamscape proved stressful for him. Cobb went with Arthur to administer the injection, just in case, but for once Eames was quite passive about it, letting Arthur roll up his sleeve without struggling.

"I'm sorry about this morning, pet," he said when Arthur bent down to put the needle in. His hand slid over Arthur's, resting on the arm of the chair, and stroked, and Arthur froze. "You needn't be afraid to touch me, though."

Cobb could see Arthur trying to rally his thoughts with an effort, trying to remember Ariadne's advice.

"I don't want to touch you, Eames," he said after a pause, "not in that way. You have boundaries, you know. You're allowed to enforce them."

"Oh?" said Eames dryly. "Pray tell why is it, then, that all my efforts to enforce said boundaries have ended with dear Cobb holding me down so that you may violate my person with needles and drugs?"

Through pursed lips, Arthur said, "We're trying to help you. Those drugs take away the dreams."

"We're still in a dream, Arthur. It just isn't mine anymore."

Arthur pushed the syringe into his arm. Eames watched, and Cobb thought he looked strangely sad.

Ariadne showed him the dream she'd designed for him on paper, a relatively simple but safe one; a ski chalet in a valley, snow falling thickly outside, fire blazing inside, bearskin rug on the floor. She'd added a dozen features just to keep projections out. "It'll be familiar and easy for you," she told Eames, who watched her with the glazed, far-off look of a stoner. She squeezed his hand and he blinked. "The point is that you'll feel warm, which will help you start to feel content, and secure. And I'll be right there with you. We can stay there for up to a day, if you want."

Arthur brought out a heart rate monitor they had purchased when they'd felt the need for one to improve their chemical testing process. Eames watched Arthur unbutton his shirt and attach the strap to his chest without saying anything. Before pulling away, Cobb caught Arthur brushing a hand over Eames' forehead and murmuring under his breath, "Go to sleep, Eames."

Cobb handed Ariadne the IV line to the PASIV, and couldn't help saying, "Be careful."

She nodded and took a deep breath. Cobb hooked Eames up to the PASIV next, and at his nod, Arthur pressed the button.

+

It was less than sixty seconds before the wristwatch monitoring Eames' heartrate shot from normal to haywire in an instant. In the same moment, Ariadne jolted awake, her hand scrabbling at her shirt, reaching up under her neckerchief.

"He shot me!" she gulped, her other hand grabbing, desperately, at her pocket, until it found her totem. Tears were streaming down her face. "He shot-- Give him the kick, Arthur, now-- I couldn't do anything, he changed it faster than I could, he was way overwhelmed--"

Eames' chest was rising and falling for breath too quickly, the monitor was screeching an alarm. It took Arthur two seconds to be at Eames' side and another one to grab the back of his chair and tip it, and Cobb didn't need his mathematical mind to know that that was so many more minutes they'd left Eames alone in his dreamscape. Eames hit the floor and woke gasping, panting, retching, grabbing for something to hold onto like he'd been plunged unexpectedly into the ocean. Arthur dropped to his knees and just like that, Eames found a hold in Arthur's lap and gripped on, his face buried in Arthur's shirt, his breath still strangled and fast. Arthur cradled him, one hand at the back of his head, and it was such a weird position to see the point man in, Cobb felt the breath catch in his throat.

Arthur was glaring heatedly at Yusuf. "No more dreams," he said in a low, quietly burning tone. "No more drugs."

Yusuf nodded mutely. On the floor, Eames sobbed into Arthur's shirt like his heart was breaking. \+ 

Eames wept for the rest of the night. Ariadne could barely look at him without starting to cry herself, having shared his nightmare, however briefly; Yusuf was too out of his depth to be any help; and the whole situation made Cobb more uncomfortable than he'd ever been in his own workspace, so of course it fell to Arthur to look after him.

Cobb looked in on them after the sun had risen. Somehow, they'd both managed to fit onto the deck chair on their sides, Arthur fitting himself to the contours of Eames' back, one arm wrapped around his chest. The forger was asleep.

Typically unabashed at having been caught spooning his male colleague, Arthur began the delicate process of extricating himself from the chair once he caught sight of Cobb. After a couple of minutes he'd slipped away without waking Eames, leaving him wrapped in the duvet.

"I didn't think he'd be able to fall asleep without the drugs by now," said Cobb.

"Me neither. I think he just exhausted himself in the end. Or his brain simply shut down, he was so overloaded." Arthur pinched the bridge of his nose with a finger and thumb, his eyes squeezing shut. "He keeps asking me to... Do you think Ariadne's right? He's trying to attack me sexually because he's scared I'll attack him first?"

"I don't know," said Cobb, feeling out of his depth.

"He hasn't done it to you."

"I don't know," said Cobb again.

Arthur huffed out a sigh and let his hand fall limply to his side. "His totem's gone. Your top won't help because it's not his. And he can't make himself a new one until he believes one-hundred percent that he's back in reality."

Cobb was starting to sense where this conversation was going. He kept his mouth shut.

Arthur sighed again and looked at him with his head tilted to one side. "You went to limbo and back, and you knew you weren't dreaming. How?"

Cobb shook his head. "It's not the same thing, Arthur. He knew he was dreaming all along. He just stopped believing in reality. He didn't think he had one to go back to. I did."

"I know it was a bad idea to put him under with Ariadne, but I thought maybe if he went back, recognized the obvious fallacy of the dream compared to here... I don't know what I thought."

"You thought he'd wake up."

Arthur glanced over at him again and nodded. They were silent for a minute, watching Eames sleep, his shoulders twitching slightly.

"Look," said Cobb finally. "I need to know that you have this under control, Arthur. We can't all stay here and babysit him forever. I have to know that you're prepared to handle this in the long run and, in the meantime, keep him from hurting himself or anyone else. We already had one close call with Ariadne. I want to help, but if he hurts someone on my team, you'll have to come up with a better plan for him."

Arthur's lips thinned. "Ariadne's a grown-up, Cobb. She knew the risks of sharing her mind with him. It was his projections who attacked, not him, and he shot her before they could harm her. This isn't ... it isn't Mal again. He isn't looking to design his own kick. He doesn't think he needs to wake up. He'll get better."

Cobb looked at him. Arthur stared back, and he was suddenly reminded forcefully of the brilliant but vulnerable teenager he'd hired all those years ago.

"I trust you," said Cobb.

"I know," said Arthur.

"I'm trusting you to be smart about this."

This time Arthur didn't say anything.

Cobb almost wanted to go on. Instead, he laid a hand on Arthur's shoulder and squeezed briefly. "Get some rest, Arthur."

"He's dreaming," said Arthur dully, pointing out the way that faint twitch had spread from Eames' shoulders to his hands, and the barely-audible rasp of his breathing. "I'll go wake him up."

Cobb watched him go, saw the way Eames rolled onto his back and stared lifelessly up at the ceiling with those dark, dead eyes once he'd been woken without saying a word of thanks, and he did not want to be the one to tell Arthur that sometimes, dreaming did this to a person. Sometimes, they never came back. He should know.

+

There were a couple of weeks where Eames simply drifted around the warehouse like a ghost and they started taking it in shifts to sleep in the warehouse with him. Cobb had continued to voice protests at the idea of Ariadne being left with him alone, but it was becoming plain that Eames felt more relaxed around her than the others, and didn't make half so many passes at her-- "And besides," Ariadne told Cobb calmly, "Arthur lent me his stun gun."

The problem was that Eames couldn't sleep, and wouldn't, citing different reasons for his insomnia. He didn't want to accidentally slip into another layer of dreaming. Or he didn't need to because he was already asleep. Or he had to stay awake in case somebody put him under and took him away again. He paced the warehouse on catlike feet and drove Cobb up the wall. Ariadne would take him on the long walk to the café bistro down by her flat that was open all night, and then take him around the university campus until they got too tired to keep walking anywhere but back to the warehouse. Yusuf would fix a hot drink for him; cocoa or warm milk, and bring him books to read by lamplight. Cobb would try to ignore him, fail every time, and call Eames into his office where they would share whisky and trade stories long into the night and he could almost swear there was nothing wrong with the forger, until Eames had one too many drinks and crumbled apart on the floor before his eyes. Cobb didn't know what to say. He could chase away Phillipa and James' bad dreams, but nothing would ever get rid of Eames'.

And Arthur; well, Cobb didn't know how Arthur handled the insomnia. But Eames always seemed a little more rested in the mornings after Arthur had been watching him. Cobb learned the reason for this when he came in early one morning and found them fast asleep together on the deck chair in the same attitude they had been before, bodies pressed flush to one another, the duvet draped loosely around them both.

"I hope you know what you're doing," he said sharply later that day, stopping at Arthur's desk. "No more shots in the dark, Arthur. We can't afford to tease him like that. He's going to take it entirely the wrong way, and you know it."

"It's the only thing that makes him sleep," said Arthur, exhaustion weighing down the words. "It's the only thing, Cobb."

There was no job for them to work, which made Cobb restless. These days he only left his children for the very biggest jobs, jobs he could still complete relatively quickly and safely. He'd agreed to help, but he was starting to feel decidedly useless. Arthur could busy himself taking care of Eames, Yusuf had some pharmacological experiments to work on, and Ariadne, when not doing schoolwork, was content to spend all her time constructing bigger and more complicated mazes and dream levels. But Cobb felt like he was spinning his wheels here. He didn't even know what he was waiting for. Some significant improvement, something that would tell him Eames was going to be fine; but all he had was Arthur's word that Eames was going to snap out of it, and Cobb's faith was dwindling.

Eames was getting better, though, by inches. Nothing huge, but his progress was at least noticeable. He showed more interest in his surroundings, now, tracking their movements around the warehouse for hours at a time with a shrewd eye as though to fully reacquaint himself with the way they each moved and spoke and breathed. He refused to leave the warehouse during the day, but he would sit by one uncovered window and people-watch. He was curbing himself more in terms of sexual aggression. He liked to sit and watch Ariadne at work, and they would have quiet conversations that Cobb couldn't hear from his office.

Eames appeared in the doorway one day while Cobb was checking his email. "Yep," he said distractedly.

"I can still forge, you know."

Cobb closed his eyes and exhaled slowly, determining not to look up when he opened them again. "That's okay, Eames. But thanks."

"I mean for the job, you silly git." There was amusement in Eames' tone. "There's nothing wrong with my forging."

"Oh." Cobb minimized the window and hesitated. "There's no job right now."

"I know. But if one comes up."

Cobb shook his head. "Arthur and I don't think it's a good idea for you to come back to work for awhile. Not until you can bring your subconscious under control again, at the very least."

"Ah. Well. You'd know all about that, I suppose." Eames was already closing off again, shoving his hands in his pockets and turning to stroll away. His mockingly thoughtful voice rang back at Cobb: "Seems everybody knows what to decide for me these days except me."

That was on a good day. The very next day, Cobb walked in to find Arthur and Eames engaged in a desperate struggle against Arthur's desk. Arthur managed to floor him just as Cobb entered the warehouse.

"You don't have to pretend with me, Arthur," Eames begged, a thread of blood trickling from the corner of his mouth onto the floor, totally oblivious to Cobb's presence. "Please, darling. I'll do anything. Anything you want."

"I can handle this," Arthur said breathlessly, noticing Cobb there, panting and looking so very young it made Cobb's heart ache.

"Anything," Eames whispered, trying to shift closer to his leg. Arthur looked down at him and said, "Take a sedative, then."

Eames' response to that was so violent that both men had to pin him down just so he wouldn't hurt himself. It took Ariadne to bring him out of his panic, talking to him in a warm and steady tone that impressed Cobb, who knew how powerfully she hurt for Eames every time she looked at him.

"I thought you had this under control," Cobb said to Arthur in a low, barely-tempered voice after Ariadne had led Eames to the bathroom to clean up his face and the two of them had gathered up all the papers that had been swept off the desk onto the floor. Arthur met his gaze squarely.

"I'm trying, Cobb. He's going to have relapses no matter what we do."

"A thought," said Ariadne, reappearing at Arthur's desk. "Have either of you tried actually talking to him about what he went through?"

Cobb could tell by the expression on Arthur's face that the point man found that idea exactly as appealing as Cobb did.

Ariadne's eyes narrowed. "Of course. I guess it isn't manly to talk about our issues. You know, for people who spend so much time crawling around in each other's minds, you guys have the whole repression thing down to an art form."

"There's a reason for that," said Arthur. "You haven't been doing this for very long, Ariadne. Working in extraction, you bare a lot of yourself to your teammates. Sometimes we need to have secrets, just so we can keep them to ourselves."

"Well, I don't think that's healthy." She flicked an accusing look at Cobb. "It wasn't for you. And it isn't for Eames."

"You talk to him, then," said Arthur impatiently. "See if it doesn't trigger him."

"I was going to suggest you do it," she said coolly. "He responds best to you."

Cobb raised his eyebrows. "That's a good response, what he was just doing?"

"He can tell me if he wants to," said Arthur flatly. "If I push him, I risk everything."

Ariadne just made a sound of frustration and started to walk away. Over her shoulder, she said, "His dreamscape smelled like your cologne, Arthur."

Cobb cast him an inquisitive glance, but Arthur appeared uncharacteristically flustered by this. "I don't even know what that means," he muttered.

+  
Later, Cobb was stuck on the way Ariadne's gaze had been fixed on him when she'd spoken about repression. He had seen the same look in Arthur's eyes.

He could tell, every time they looked at him, that they expected him to pull some magical fix out of nowhere. He was Cobb, the best extractor in the world -- he'd led them three dream-layers deep and performed inception. He'd been to limbo and back, twice. And he was supposed to understand what was going on in Eames' head.

Arthur had said it himself, though. This wasn't Mal. Wasn't, and Cobb refused to see it that way, and even though sometimes it made Cobb's heart hurt in a very real, visceral way, he just looked away and let Arthur handle it. If he let himself see the parallels, it would hurt that much more when he ruined this and lost Eames forever, too.

+  
He blinded himself to the full scope of Eames' problems, repeatedly telling himself that Arthur had it under control. Arthur was taking care of it.

So the night he stepped out of his office late to head home and found Arthur and Eames pressed up against the wall in the dying light, forger smothering the point man with superior body weight, pinning him breathlessly tight, their lips locked together--

To say Cobb was taken aback would have been an understatement. The very air seemed to rush out of the warehouse like a vacuum, leaving no room for oxygen or sound for a second.

Arthur's hands were clenched tight in Eames' shirt, trying to find the leverage to push him away. He was still and almost perfectly silent, except for the faint sounds of protest that escaped his throat. Eames, in turn, was almost sobbing, folding himself to Arthur's body with a sort of helpless desperation. Cobb realized after a second that he wasn't being violent, or hurting Arthur, which was why Arthur hadn't made an aggressive attempt to fight him off yet. It was like something else was holding him to Arthur's mouth; like he needed it more frantically than air, and at the same moment was wishing to God he could stop.

Cobb was glad that he noticed this, because in the span of that second he'd closed the distance between them and he barely managed to stop himself from finally snapping and doing something like just hitting Eames as hard as he could. Instead, he grabbed Eames by the back of his collar and half-choked him when he yanked the man away.

"Cobb, no," Arthur started feebly, but stopped when Eames snarled and swung. He was lashing out like a frightened feral animal, pure instinct, and it was easy for Cobb to shove his arm aside. He grabbed the back of Eames' shirt again and started pushing him across the warehouse. Eames struggled only for a moment, then stopped resisting altogether, even when Cobb shoved him into a lawn chair and kicked open the briefcase holding the PASIV. Eames' gaze was hunted.

"Do it," he said.

"No." Arthur was behind him. "Cobb."

Cobb reeled the IV lines out of the PD. Straightening up, he caught the flinch that ghosted over Eames' face.

"What are you doing?" Arthur demanded.

Cobb slid the IV into Eames' wrist. Eames didn't fight, didn't struggle, just watched with a horrified sort of compliance.

"I'm going to help him," Cobb said, and he punched the button in the PASIV.

Eames had no time to panic. It took him a few seconds to fall completely asleep, his breath first speeding up and then slowing down. For a moment, it was quiet.

"I'm going down with him," Cobb said, because for Christ's sake, he was an extractor and he could do this. "Thirty minutes. If he gets significantly distressed, give me ninety seconds and only then pull the plug."

"Cobb, you have to stop, he isn't ready--"

"I'm ordering you, Arthur!" Cobb snapped. Arthur smoothed his expression into something unreadable, and nodded. Arthur was a good point man. He would follow Cobb's orders to the letter. Even this.

Cobb slid into his seat and attached the second IV to his wrist. The last thing he saw before going under was Arthur, kneeling in front of Eames and touching his hand.

+  
+  
+

"It takes four seconds to fall from the Golden Gate Bridge into the Pacific Ocean," Eames said.

"This isn't the Golden Gate Bridge," Cobb pointed out.

"Good God, I should hope not." Eames turned so he could lean his back against the rail and light up a cigarette. "As if my subconscious would put up an eyesore like that."

It was night, and the bridge was lit up from the base of each tower, giving everything an unearthly glow. They stood on the topmost horizontal walkway of an imperfect Tower Bridge, which gave them a view of the river below. There was no glass beyond the railing and nothing over their heads but the night sky. The wind whipped around them and grabbed at Cobb's coat.

"This is your dream, Eames," said Cobb. "What did you want to show me?"

"I did, didn't I?" said Eames vaguely. He took a few slow, thoughtful drags from the cigarette. Projections wandered past them. Cobb wondered how he'd missed the first time how broken-down they all looked, their eyes on the ground, voices subdued.

Eames turned around again and looked over the rail. The water was black and calm-looking.

"They say the people who survive the fall from the Golden Gate find God on their way down. I always wondered which second that happens at. The first, right after they jump? Or the third, before they hit the water?"

Cobb was silent. They both stared down at the river for awhile.

"It takes two-point-five seconds to fall from here to there," said Eames finally, slowly tracing a line with the end of his lit cigarette from the footpath where they stood to the water below. "I counted every time."

Cobb didn't say anything. Eames continued to smoke peacefully. The wind whistled around the towers.

"I never found God, you know," he said thoughtfully. "Suppose I wasn't looking hard enough."

+  
"Did you design all of this?" Cobb asked, when they found themselves back in the casino.

"Yeah. Essentially. Over time, mind."

Eames moved easily through his projections, the slope of his shoulders relaxed. Cobb kept watching for any sign of distress, any warning that violent projections might come crashing through the walls of the dream. But Eames was calmer than he'd seen him since they'd brought him into reality. This was a world he was familiar with, where he knew all the rules and was fluent in the language.

"An architect built it first," he was saying, Cobb following in his wake, since he seemed to know where he was going. "It was just a hotel at first. But I got bored." He snatched up a poker chip from one of the tables -- none of the projections even blinked -- and flipped it lazily with his thumb, catching it in mid-air. "Nice thing about playing poker with my own mind -- I can beat me."

"What about the other people who came here?"

They'd reached the bar where Cobb had first found him. Eames paused, already reaching for a poured scotch. After a moment, he picked up the glass anyway and drank. Cobb waited. At length, the hand Eames gripped the glass with wavered, and he set it back down slowly.

"Do you know what they did?"

"Yes."

"I know what you're thinking," said Eames. "You and Arthur both. I can see you thinking it every time you look at me."

"What's that?"

"You're wondering why I didn't keep fighting. Or why I didn't just say no. Stop doing it."

Cobb shook his head. Of all the things that had been pressing on his mind over the past few weeks...

"We've never thought that."

"I'm not like either of you, you know. I tried to be. But one can live a shockingly long time down here, suffering, without actually dying." Eames swallowed a mouthful of scotch with a shudder. "I suppose that's our problem, isn't it, Cobb? We open our minds to each other so much, we never bother protecting our own subconsciouses. Not that it would have helped. It had to be my dream, you see, so the projections wouldn't get antsy, and because the tourists can barely design the wallpaper. I made it pretty for them. Just so that you understand, Cobb," he said. "Judas fucking Iscariot to my own bloody mind."

+  
They'd been under for three hours now. They had three hours left on the clock.

"You wanted to show me something," Cobb told him.

"I'm afraid I don't remember, pet." Eames glanced up at the dark sky. No stars. "How long was I gone for?"

"Almost four months," said Cobb.

"Four months," Eames echoed. "Only four months? It's like I was barely gone at all."

The cobblestone street outside the casino, with its lit-up Trevi Fountain lookalike, gave the illusion of going places, but every street just led to one another. Everything was connected. Even the bridge: no matter which way it was crossed, it took you back to the same place. Paradoxes, laid by an architect. A hamster in a fucking wheel, Eames said.

"Arthur estimates it was about three and a half years down here," Cobb said.

Eames frowned. "Three and a half years? No, it was more than that. I don't know exactly -- maybe five."

He picked up a stone and threw it at the fountain. Impossibly, it skipped over the surface of the water.

"I can't pinpoint when exactly I was in a deeper level of dreaming," he said. "They had a chemist. It was a different compound. I didn't go to limbo when I died, but I couldn't really wake up, either." There was distaste in his tone. "I spent a whole month being a sixteen-year-old girl for some rich mogul and when he finally let me die, I woke up in the exact same dream. Square fucking one, only one level up."

He threw another stone. It hit the water with a splash and sank.

"He killed you?" said Cobb, after a silence.

"Well, that's the thing about shared dreaming, when you never meet the other person, never get to see their face up above, and you pay to use them like a toy, isn't it?" said Eames. "Do you know what that is?"

"No," Cobb admitted.

"They stop thinking you're real. There are no consequences, after all, no lasting damage. You become just another projection walking around -- just a hole for them to fuck. Everything they've always wanted to do but society wouldn't let them, everything their real partner would never let them consider, everything their conscience warned them against. Every dark, sick, secret thought that's ever crawled out from the very blackest pit of your mind. It all ends up here."

Neither of them spoke for a few minutes. The silence wasn't uncomfortable. It was companionable. Eames wasn't angry: the words were matter-of-fact.

"Funny thing," Eames broke the silence at length. "When everybody you meet down here for five years treats you like you aren't real, you start to wonder if they're on to something."

+  
There were two people in a corner of the casino having sex against the wall. They were totally, utterly silent. Eames took no notice of them. He turned his head as they walked past the bar and met the gaze of a young woman wearing a dress and nursing a drink. He took the poker chip out of his pocket and ran his thumb over it.

"I got picked up at a bar just like that one once, by a beautiful girl with brown eyes. She was gone in the morning. Never told me her name."

"So you recreated it," said Cobb. "You put yourself in her place."

"The anonymity was something I could cling to, at least," Eames said carelessly, squinting across at the casino he'd constructed. "They always came with requests. Men asking me to be women, men asking me to be men. Different faces and heights and clothes and voices. Nobody ever asked me to be me."

"Retrace your steps," said Cobb. "Where did you take them?"

"I didn't take them anywhere, darling. _They_ took _me_ ," said Eames, but he was walking confidently across the casino floor. They stepped into a glass and gold elevator, and Eames hit the button for the second floor. The doors slid smoothly shut.

There were no windows in the hallway they stepped into, only a line of doors numbered 1 through 16. Eames opened the first one. It was a high-end honeymoon suite, big enough to be someone's apartment, far nicer than the hotel Cobb had always booked for his anniversary.

"That's a good one," said Eames appreciatively. "It has a minibar."

"What about the others?"

"The ones that are actually rooms range from luxury accommodations to roach traps in the corners. Seven's a nightclub and Twelve is a scummy back alley. And so on and such forth. Client's pick. You can peruse the catalogue if you'd like." There was bitter irony in the words.

"What about the other one," Cobb tested him, lightly-- "The one you never let anyone see?"

Eames shut the door and studied him inscrutably for a long moment. Cobb stared back, wondering if he was right to try and pull this on somebody he worked with. In particular, somebody whose mind had been raided and looted by extractors already, dragging his secrets and fears into the open, and forcing his mind open for tourists to invade and leave ugly scars.

But then Eames' gaze slid past his face to focus on something behind him. Cobb turned and saw the seventeenth door at the end of the hall.

He walked towards it. Eames followed him.

"416," Cobb read on the door. "Why 416?"

Eames smiled. It was a very small, unhappy smile. "That's the number of Arthur's flat, of course," he said, and pushed a key card into the door. It unlocked and swung slowly open.

It was Arthur's bedroom. Cobb had only seen it once, just after he'd bought the place, because the door was always closed when he was there; but he could hold an image of it clearly in his eidetic memory. Eames' memory was less accurate, and Cobb could see the small imperfections -- the carpet the wrong shade of taupe, the headboard of the bed a different shape, the sheets rumpled and mussed instead of neatly made hospital corners, the way Arthur left it. But it was unmistakeable all the same.

"Do you know what it's like," Eames whispered dazedly, walking up to the bed. "To spend every minute of your existence being used as a sex toy by people who don't even consider you human. Five years, Cobb. Up to twenty-four clients in a day, sometimes."

"I'm sorry," said Cobb. He truly, to-the-core was. "I don't."

"Some days I could almost talk myself into thinking I enjoyed it, because at least it was something, some human connection. Other times I wondered if somehow they were my own projections; like I wanted this, in some backward way." He laughed bluntly. "Then of course I had to wonder if I was their projection, and all my memories were just somebody else's dream."

"Is that why you stopped believing in reality?" Cobb asked. "You started believing that you were never real?"

"Yes. It was all a lot of existentialist angst, I'm afraid." Eames sank down onto the edge of the bed, touching the corner of the coverlet almost reverently. "But I had this place. It's the only one that was all mine, nobody else allowed. The extractors all missed it -- none as good as you, of course." He reached out, closed his hand around a pillow and pulled it into his lap, eyes half-closing. "It's funny, how you can start to lose someone's face after just five or so years, when you see hundreds of faces and have to fashion new ones all the time. But it still smelled like him. I never lost that."

It was then that Cobb noticed the faint spice of Arthur's cologne, lingering in the room like a ghost.

"Did you want to show me what's in there?" Cobb asked quietly, pointing to Arthur's closet. Eames was silent. "What did you keep in there, Eames?"

Eames just watched as Cobb slid open the closet door. There was a safe, small and inconspicuous, on a shelf. He laid a hand on the dial and twisted it: 4, 1, 6. It clicked open.

"Why Arthur, Eames?" Cobb murmured, reaching in. "Why his bedroom?"

Eames didn't answer again. He didn't have to. It was in the safe, on the rumpled and worn slip of paper Cobb was holding in his hand. He read it twice, then smoothed it out on his knee and reached inside again. It did not surprise him when his hand closed around a smooth, cool cube of plastic.

"I don't know the number," Eames said. He was still sitting on the bed. His voice wavered. "I don't know what bloody number it lands on. It was always different. So I never knew. I kept waiting, I waited five _fucking_ years for Arthur to show up and roll the stupid thing and tell me it was wrong, and he was going to take me back to reality. And when he finally showed up -- do you know what the first thing I remember is, when you woke me up? It was what he smelled like. And it was perfect. It wasn't just my memory filling in the gaps, it was _him_ , and I thought I must have ended up in his dream, somehow. And d'you know what the first thing I thought was?"

"What?" Cobb asked.

Eames laughed self-deprecatingly. His voice was breaking. "I thought, _God. What must he want from me?_ "

"So you thought he wanted sex?"

"That's all _anybody_ wants, love. Even Arthur. He acts like he doesn't, but I _know_." Eames was folding over, crumpling like a wet piece of paper, his head landing in his hands. His voice was muffled and hitching. "I don't have anything else to give him, Cobb."

"He doesn't want anything from you, Eames. None of us do. I promise."

"I don't want to be left here again. Even if that's all Arthur wants me for, even if he can't stand to look at me without feeling disgust, I'll take it. I don't want him to leave me here. I felt like a rat in a maze down here, never knowing how deep I was or how quickly time was actually passing. I'm terrified of waking up here every time I shut my eyes. I'll do anything, if he'll only let me stay there in his dream with him."

"He knew you were missing," said Cobb quietly. "He knew it almost right away. Within days. He spent months searching for you. He's the one who found you and got you out, I just came along to help if I could. He's not going to leave you, Eames, because he's not dreaming. He fought heaven and earth so he could bring you back to reality. That's the only thing he wants from you."

"He looks at me like I'm dead," Eames whispered. "Like I'm gone and he's already grieving, but I'm right here."

"You waited for him," was all Cobb could say, softly. "He's still waiting for you. You only have to come back."

"If that's reality, that means all of this happened to me, and there are hundreds and hundreds of people walking the streets who bought me and came down here with me and used me like a whore. Cobb," Eames said, and he sounded so, so exhausted. "You understand wanting to live in a dream forever, don't you?"

Cobb was spared from answering. Music was starting to swell in their ears like a pulse, heady and powerful. Arthur, warning them that he was able to give them the kick.

Cobb crossed the room and sat down on the bed, pulling Eames' hands away from his face.

"If you do one thing for Arthur," he said slowly, making sure that Eames was looking him in the eyes, "just do this, Eames. Wake up."

The room melted away.

+  
+  
+

Cobb told Arthur everything he'd seen in Eames' subconscious over coffee that night. Arthur gripped his cup tighter and gazed into the street, at the people who walked past their table and chatted in French.

"What now, then?" he asked finally, without looking at Cobb.

"Well," said Cobb, because it seemed so obvious to him. "You love him too, don't you?"

+  
At the warehouse Arthur found a poker chip, Cobb didn't know where, possibly to go with the playing cards Eames used to keep handy in one of the desks. He sat with the chip cradled in hand and used a knife to scratch at the surface of it. He sat there a long time and Cobb knew he wouldn't budge until he had it perfect, every line worn in deep and smooth.

Then he got up and crouched down next to the chair Eames was slumped in, gaze far-away as usual. He managed to focus long enough for Arthur to show him the undamaged side of the poker chip. Then the point man closed his hand around it and dug the loaded die out of his pocket. Taking Eames' hand, he dropped the die onto his palm.

"Roll it," he said.

Blinking, Eames dropped his hand and tossed the die along the floor. Cobb, watching, looked away to preserve the secret number between the two of them.

Arthur took Eames' hand again and laid the poker chip there, folding Eames' fingers around it securely. Eames uncurled his hand and looked at it, and Cobb didn't have to see the number of the die on the floor to know that it would match the number carved on the chip.

"I don't pretend with you," Arthur told him quietly. "But more importantly, I would never ask you to pretend for me. I want you exactly as you are, Eames -- the real you. I'm real, and that number is real. And this is real."

He leaned forward on his toes and pressed a kiss to Eames' lips, not for a second wavering. Eames just made a broken, needy sound, and the hand he raised to cup Arthur's cheek was shaking.

Arthur clasped Eames' other hand in both of his and pulled back an inch, looking him in the eyes. "Do you want to come home with me and get some sleep now?"

"Yeah," said Eames hoarsely, his voice breaking slightly.

At that point in their conversation, their voices briefly dropped too low for Cobb to hear; but like the poker chip, he didn't need to hear to know what they were saying. He turned and went back into his office, where he'd left the top spinning on his desk. It had fallen on its side, shining dully. He thought of Mal, and pocketed it.


End file.
